Walk the Read Bookmarks
Bookmark these Literary Landmark trips!
Categories: Featured Travel Stories
By: Meghan Saar 03/01/2008
Walking Tom Sawyer in California
Mark Twain Plaza is located near the Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco’s tallest skyscraper and the site of the Turkish Baths where Twain met a volunteer fireman named Tom Sawyer, while the author was reporting for the Daily Morning Call. It’s likely this man did inspire the name of Twain’s novel, as a biographical sketch of the fireman, published in 1900, mentioned this; neither Twain nor the fireman challenged the claim.
What most don’t know about this building is that a California Gold Rush artifact lies exactly beneath it! Fortune seekers came here via the whaling vessel Niantic, which was converted into a hotel in 1849. Fires destroyed it a few years later, but you can view artifacts from the ship at the San Francisco Maritime Museum.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT